Basta…enough is enough

In 1773, the people of Boston had enough. They had enough of paying tribute to and following the rules of a faraway overlord. They had enough of being ordered around. They had enough of having to follow all the rules of their boss’s house, without getting any of the benefits. Most of all, they hated the humiliation, lack of respect, and sheer disregard for their welfare that came from their colonial master an ocean away.

Bostonians dumped their colonial master’s tea in the harbor. They formed their own status commission. Proudly, they declared independence:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them…

Our own schools in the Marianas teach us to admire the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence. Everybody in America the Beautiful knows the early Boston freedom fighters’ story.

I went to American schools, and I learned the Boston Tea Partiers’ story. I admired their willingness to stand up to their colonial masters in the name of self-determination and self-respect.

And like any good student of history, I want to do more than admire the Boston Tea Party. I want to be inspired by it.

We, the people of the Marianas, are not any worse than those early Boston colonists. Our skin is browner and our harbor is warmer, but our grievances are basically the same.

As we try to eke out a living here on our remote islands, the U.S. federal government keeps pointing a finger in our faces. We can’t hire who we want. We aren’t allowed to pay island market wages; we have to pay the same wages as New York and Washington, D.C. The federal government forces us to follow their faraway rules on everything from how we manage our money to what food we’re allowed to eat to how we can farm and mine our own lands. We aren’t even allowed to distill our own tuba wine at home without a federal permit.

Sure, the Americans got some of our well-meaning ancestors to sign some papers back in 1977. They promised to bring them prosperity and economic development. Look around you. Drive around anywhere in the Marianas other than Capital Hill and the federal buildings. Do you see the federal government bringing us any prosperity and economic development?

The white colonists also tricked the Indigenous Native Americans to sign away their lands, their freedom, and their dignity, sometimes convincing Indigenous Native Americans to trade entire countries for a necklace or a bottle of whiskey.

Nowadays we know that those deals weren’t fair, even if there was ink on paper. Taking away people’s land for some vague promises is obviously exploitative. Don’t we have the sense to know that the same applies to the Covenant we were made to sign?

All we got in return was Uncle Sam poking his finger in our eyes, and telling us when to sit, stand, lie down, and heel. We’re even allowed to bark a little bit, in the U.S. House of Representatives. But we’re definitely not allowed to bite, nor can our Congressional representative.

Our supposed “representative” can’t vote in Congress, and we can’t either. Somehow we’re lesser beings than Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas.

But when it comes to following Uncle Sam’s rules, we’re not given any exceptions or lenience. None. We have to follow every last rule, no matter how much it limits our wellbeing or how much it infringes on our traditional culture. Even though we can’t even vote. Even though we can’t even get adequate disaster relief or food stamps or funding for our electric grid or hospital.

We have all the obligations, and none of the benefits. I definitely know how they felt in Boston back then. Do you feel it too?

Are they going to tell me that I don’t know about America? I’m sitting in a hotel room in California as I write this.

The people cleaning my hotel room are illegal immigrants. I see illegal immigrants openly working on every construction project and every farm here in the Land of the Free. I doubt they’re being paid minimum wage or paying any taxes. Everybody knows it and nobody cares. But when illegal immigration happens on our islands, Uncle Sam raises a big commotion and uses it as a pretext to punish us some more and maybe downgrade our food rations and take away our bathroom privileges?

I see meth addicts and dealers everywhere here in “perfect” California. Every emergency room is full of addicts. Every trailer park resembles the set of Breaking Bad. People shrug and say there’s no way to stop it and it’s a part of life. Yet we, the people of Marianas, are characterized as horrible monsters who don’t deserve our U.S. passports because we have drug addicts among our people?

I see environmental protesters at every factory and development project in California. Yet when we people of the Marianas object to our beautiful islands being made into a bombing range, we’re denigrated as ungrateful traitors?

I see corruption and malfeasance at every level of federal government, from post office clerks all the way up to the top. Yet we Marianas people are singled out, prosecuted, and persecuted in our lands and watched in our own homes and threatened with prison at every step, as if we invented corruption?

I say: Enough. Basta.

Enough kicking us.
Enough giving us rules made to keep us down.
Enough taking our lands.
Enough exploiting our waters.
Enough bombing our islands.
Enough FBI, CIA, DoD, ATF, SSA, and all the rest of the alphabet of exploitation.
Basta.

We are not born to be America’s punching bag or obedient pet. Basta.

We listened in American History class. We’re what every teacher is afraid of: we’re the students who learned their lesson a little too well. We’re going to take the example of the Bostonians and speak truth to power and stop the decades of abuse and humiliation we’ve been subjected to.

But unlike those supposed Tea Party heroes who went on a violent spree slashing containers and destroying ships and property, we the people of the Marianas are not thugs or vandals. I don’t advocate violence. We island people are a lot less violent than those early American revolutionaries.

I don’t support spilling our exploiters’ tea into the harbor. I don’t support destroying the containers of noxious Spam and Marlboros they send over to poison us.

What I do support is the most peaceful, most regular, and most humane path to our dignity and independence: the status commission. The status commission can let us sit down and discuss these issues for ourselves. With the knowledge of history and politics that maybe our ancestors lacked. With the lack of fear of the white man that maybe our ancestors needed a little bit more of.

Let’s say BASTA to the hypocrisy, to the fingers pointed at us, to being told “no,” to being treated like naughty stepchildren.

Let’s find our self-respect. Let’s stand up for ourselves. Let’s sit down and think and talk about our real future, in a status commission that works for our future, by us and for us. Not somebody else’s vision of how we can be useful to Washington.

Join me. Let’s stand for a new Marianas, free of the chains of subjugation, free of fear, free of exploitation.

Basta. Enough being slaves on our own precious islands.

Let’s find a new way.

Juan Diego C. Blanco
As Lito